An open e-mail to Seth Godin — I’m a big fan of his!
Seth,
I’m a big fan of your blog, following it for quite some time. And normally, you nail your topics, dead on accurate. Unfortunately not today (re: your post titled “Ads are the new online tip jar“). You’re not totally wrong (I say with […]

I just came across a thorough presentation compiled by Greg Stuart, former CEO and President of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). It is called an “In-Depth Introduction to Internet Advertising” and is a whopping 82 slides. However, it contains many great sound-bites as well as stats that any interactive marketer should have in their arsenal.

Creating widgets with the goal of engaging the user once or twice and spam their friends, is about as forward-looking as putting radio on TV. I’m not going to say that it’s a waste of money – it’s just a waste of the medium, channel and audience attention.

Advertisers need to stop producing ads that are likely to generate unqualified clicks, as those ads don’t do anybody justice; Advertisers get frustrated when ads that engage fail to generate conversions, publishers loose their credibility as targeted destinations, but most importantly, customer gets more jaded as they learn that even the few ads they do click on lead to irrelevant junk.

More relevant banner ads generate more clicks. Can’t argue with that logic. However, I’m not sure advertisers have quite figured out what to do with the new rich(er) media ads. My gut feeling says that many advertisers are investing in this type of advertising purely for their branding effect. Maybe the thinking is “if we can’t make users click, let’s at least make the experience memorable, and score high on brand recall and awareness.” That’s a tall order for a small banner.